Saturday, November 30, 2013

In
these still early days of social media, folks struggle with how much of
themselves to share online and who should be allowed to see it. And I’ve heard many
professionals insist they don’t want coworkers to have access to their private
lives via Facebook, winching from social media the way the Amish would
photographs.

But
it’s becoming increasingly clear that walling off your personal life from the
online world is not just difficult, but perhaps not even necessary, and maybe
even a handicap. In some cases it’s become a negative to be a digital hermit.
So just as face-to-face interactions require tact, perhaps it’s more useful to
ponder what to share and what to keep private.

Because
I’m a Realtor and a writer, I embraced Internet exposure. Anything to get my
name out there. And when it came to posting political beliefs on Facebook, I
always felt, “Hey, this is part of who I am. I’m not hiding it.” But sitting in
a continuing-ed real estate class 18 months ago, the PowerPoint presenter, with remote in hand asked, “Who among you are posting strident political
statements on Facebook?” Almost nobody (including me) raised a hand, but you
could see the tightening body language across the room and some slumping in
seats. He asked, “Why are you doing that? When was the last time you changed
your opinion about something based on something your saw on Facebook? You’re
just pissing people off.”

I fermented some hard cider, so of course had to tell everyoneabout it. And somehow my Aug/Sept biking schedule appears too. Is nothing private?

That
rang so true I logged onto Facebook right then and there and began deleting all
my snarky anti-Tea Party comments, reposts of Rachel Maddow quips, and Huffington
Post articles.

But
I never felt entirely comfortable with that decision. Being silent in the face
of injustice is a special kind of sin. So I narrowed my social and political
postings to two issues: social justice and gay rights, two issues I care deeply
about that have particular social meaning right now.

Still,
I know I’m inciting discomfort. Not a good thing in a medium where you can be
hidden with a click – the online equivalent of someone throwing a black sheet
over your head at a cocktail party because you discussed uncomfortable topics.

On
the other end of the spectrum are 2 guys I’m friends with on Facebook who have
raised the Facebook identity to a social art. Their posts carefully reflect
specific personalities. And they’re the best Hoosiers ever, meaning their posts
will never, ever, ever offend anyone or make anyone uncomfortable. That they’re
both in the advertising industry at the same company says a lot about their
style. Their Facebook personas are brands of sorts. Really sweet, endearing brands.
We see their hobbies, their families, their children, their pets, even their
quirks – with one it’s a love of vintage business signage, with the other it’s reoccurring
photos of interesting number combinations on the dashboard odometer. And they
have faithful followers. They can post nearly anything and comments flood in
from their friends, co-workers, and clients.

Their
posts give the impression they have no political opinions, are apparently
unaware of religion in any form, and nothing bad ever happens to them, or, like
good Hoosiers, they avoid discussion of all three topics.

Turns
out they’re onto something. A recent University of Pennsylvania study showed
that people who shared their personal lives online where perceived as better
workers by their coworkers.

Not wanting my Instagram identityto simply be another Facebook, Idecided to only post inanimateobjects - the cool stuff I encounterin my daily life. Lots of archit-ectural elements

That’s
not true with everyone in social media. A former student from my teaching days
is a Facebook friend with a filter more broken than mine. I used to see posts
from her attacking her bosses and coworkers and customers. Still seeing her a little as the 16 year old girl she ceased being many years ago, I sent a fatherly
private message asking, “Are you worried that people at your work will see your
posts?” Her quick reply showed she didn’t care one damn bit.

But
I think she’s on borrowed time.

It’s
becoming increasingly difficult to keep our work and online lives separate. If
you’re clinging to that old, “I can’t be bothered with something as shallow as
social media,” as I once did, you should know it’s not an attractive or
endearing quality. It marks you as out of touch with modern social
norms.

But
managing what you share is a constant battle.

Before
Micki and I went on our first date last March we only knew each other online.
As she was getting out of the car at the end of our date, she noticed a pile of
books in my backseat – copies of a local literary journal I publish with a
buddy. I handed her a copy and said, “You might enjoy this.”

Once
home she sent me a text saying, “Hey, the logo for your book project (a
grasshopper) is exactly like your tattoo.”

I
froze. She couldn’t know that.

“How
did you know I had a grasshopper tattoo on my shoulder?” I texted back. There
was a long silence before her sheepish reply. She admitted to googling me in
the days before our date. There was my address, phone number, my real estate
web site with details about my career and testimonials from past clients, links
to newspaper stories and columns I’d written, reviews of a book I’d published,
my blog – filled with stories about my life and details about my beliefs, an Indy
Star story about the restoration of my house, and yes, the website for that
literary journal, The Polk Street Review, complete with a photo file that
included a picture of me pulling up my shirt sleeve at a public reading,
revealing my grasshopper tattoo.

I
wasn’t offended. Who could blame her? “Smart girl,” I texted back. She was
going to meet a man she’d never met at a coffee shop she’d never been to. I might
have wondered about her intelligence if she hadn’t googled me. But it was
sobering to consider how much there is about me online. Not stuff marketing
companies have gathered and shared against my will, but stuff I’ve gladly
posted about myself.

It’s
a little bit the nature of my work. How can you sell real estate or writing if
you don’t throw yourself at people? But it’s also a measure of where we are.
You are going to be out there. Sure, you can easily make yourself invisible to
a particular person on Facebook – if they look for you it will simply appear
that you don’t have a Facebook account. But that won’t work for the myriad of
other web sites that have your info, right down to county tax records that show
your address, what you pay in property taxes, and how much you paid for your
house. Hell, Google street view will let someone virtually walk right up to your
front door.

The
reality about all these examples: each are pretty honest representations of who
we are in real life. My former student is aggressively honest to a fault, the
two advertising guys are genial, kind fellows with cool interests who don’t
like to make people uncomfortable with their politics (I know the politics of
one of them and so know he’s purposefully holding back), and me, I’m intellectually curious with an ADD-like scattershot approach,
combined with a broken and/or immature filter and I’m constantly promoting my
work online.

You
can’t hide yourself, online or off. The real you still comes out. For
better or worse.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

I
didn’t realize it until the past few years, but food it a big way I tell people
I care about them.

After
my marriage ended, the first gal I dated had never been married nor had kids,
and so had the dining habits of a bachelor. Oh, she knew how to order sushi and wine in a restaurant; but cook? No. Lunch or dinner to her might be a
cheese and lettuce sandwich and a handful of blueberries, eaten standing up at
the kitchen counter. The whole process, from preparation to eating to cleaning
up took about 10 minutes. I kept cooking meals for her but as much as she enjoyed
them, it didn’t mean the same thing to her that it did to me. And my
obsession with sharing mealtime and the rituals of its preparation actually
became a frustration for both of us – me struggling to speak to her in my
language, and her not entirely getting the point of the conversation.

Separated
from my children and previous life, I was trying to connect with her via the
echo of a ritual that was deep in me. That was my “aha! moment;” the moment when I saw I wasn't simply trying to cook for her.

When
I was a child, my family ate dinner together regularly. Likewise, when my kids
were small, their mother and I saw to it that we ate together as a family 4 or
5 times a week. It didn’t matter so much what we were eating – could be fish
sticks or 49 cent pot pies from Aldi’s, just that we were connecting as a family
every evening. For years I was the sole breadwinner and so wasn’t doing that
much cooking, but after their mom went back to work and the kids got older I
was cooking more while the meals together got harder to coordinate around 5
schedules. So I spent countless Saturday or Sunday afternoons restoring my old house while meat smoked on the grill, bread rose in the kitchen, and veggies
from the garden waited on the counter. From time to time I’d brush the paint chips and sawdust
off my shirt and knead dough or tend the grill, then climb back up the
scaffolding. At the end of the day we eventually gathered around the table with marinated chicken, steamed
broccoli, and fresh bread.

There
was something obsessive in my instance that everyone be there and that every
dish be ready at just the right moment. Sometime showing love takes a lot of work
and sometimes it just takes sitting and eating, appreciating what was put
before you. If you’re thinking about it right, either part you play is fine.

I still laugh at the times when it went wrong.

I
recall cooking a ridiculously doomed and elaborate meal for a girl when I was in
my early 20s. I fell for her in England when we were both visiting BSU students
in London. After we returned to Muncie I knocked myself out fixing a dinner for
her. A week earlier she had invited me over for lunch and served me hot dogs
sautee’d in barbeque sauce, barbeque potato chips, and root beer (I’m not
making this up). Hell, with a menu like that, maybe she was trying to kill me.
But, trying to speak her language, I made barbeque sauce from scratch and
grilled some chicken, made my great aunt’s baked bean recipe, and God knows what else for a quiet dinner together in my little
basement apartment on Calvert. The evening was a disaster. Not a loud explosive
disaster, but a slow, quiet, suffocating - get me the hell outta here disaster.

I
guess sometimes you outta just talk directly to people instead of trying to
bribe them with food. Maybe I was afraid of the responses she’d give me, so
thought I’d tip-toe to her heart through her stomach. Whatever I was trying to
do, it didn’t work. She dumped me and went back to her old boyfriend.

Still
most of the time spent cooking for people is a good thing. The times it
went wrong are a reality check.

In
trying to understand how food became a symbol of affection to me I recognized that
gift giving and acts of service are a language of love I was raised on. The
Meyers are gift givers. Of the generation of Meyers who raised me – if you were
waiting for one of them to say, “I love you,” it was gonna be a long fucking wait.
But in my times of need they were quietly fixing my problems or writing me a birthday
check they knew I’d spend on something I needed or loved.

Or
. . . they were preparing food for me or picking up the check at a restaurant.

And
I find it passed down to another generation. My cousin Margaux has a lovely habit
of opening her house to a wide circle of friends, presenting meals and events
to draw close the people she loves. She learned it from her father – my
father’s brother. My oldest son is a self-taught chef of Asian food. I can’t
count the nights in the past 2 years Cal cooked me an amazing meal. My middle
son Jack cooks for those he loves and recently I’ve found my youngest, Sally
cooking for her boyfriend – eggs, lots of eggs.

But we
are a younger generations of Meyers. We have no problem saying, “I
love you." But that old language of giving in lieu of talking is wrapped up in our way of showing affection.

On
Halloween night Micki was to arrive after work. I’d cooked a pot of chili
and mixed batter for corn cake. Much of the ingredients for the chili were
items I canned from my summer garden. But when a full waiting room kept her
unexpectedly late at the office seeing patients, we agreed I’d drive up to Ft.
Wayne and save her the trip down to Noblesville. After I set the pots of food
on the floorboards of my car and stood to close the passenger door, I froze, staring at the dishes. It occurred to me I’d loaded the food in the car before
I’d even thrown clothes in a suitcase.

Hmmm.
Why was that my automatic first action? I guess becoming aware of your
motivations doesn’t stop the reflex. And maybe there’s no need to stop it.
It was me offering perhaps the most important thing I would put in the car
besides myself – something I’d made to nourish a person I loved.

So
if I’ve cooked something for you, or if you’re one of that handful of people
who have been handed a jar of my homemade Sriracha sauce or canned black
raspberry jam, or if I’ve dropped off a fresh-baked loaf of bread at your door or a just-picked bag of green beans from my garden, it was a note from me
saying, “I love you.”

That’s
not literally what I’m thinking when I do it, but I can see now that’s really
what it is.

Followers

About Me

The Contrarian's work has appeared in the Noblesville Daily Ledger, The Noblesville Times, NUVO Newsweekly, The Indianapolis Eye (web-based), The Noblesville Current, and at www.dailyyonder.com. He is the co-founder of the literary journal, the Polk Street Review, where his stories also appear. His novel, Stardust was published in 2002 and has just been republished again under the title "Noblesville," by River's Edge Media. His 2nd novel, The Salvage Man, was released August of 2015 by River's Edge. Kurt is a former school teacher and a Realtor.